Each day this week, EFF and allied groups are hosting discussions about principles that should guide copyright policy. On Monday, we looked at how copyright can be a tool of censorship. Case in point: the makers of a much-criticized movie about a Nazi-era romance, Where Hands Touch, chose to react to video criticism by filing unjustified takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

On Tuesday, we looked at how the DMCA is being used to undermine ownership of technological devices—preventing users from jailbreaking a phone, or re-programming a scooter. On Wednesday, we examined some good news: the growth of the public domain, which on January 1st expanded for the first time in 20 years.

In 2018, digital privacy and free speech were front-and-center in the public conversation. We continued our tradition of writing year-end blog posts about the most important developments in this space. The past year saw advances for state-level net neutrality, with four states, including California, passing net neutrality laws. The Carpenter v. United States case was one of our big legal wins of the year, as the U.S. Supreme Court cited EFF’s amicus brief in deciding that cell phone location information is protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The new EU Copyright Directive is progressing at an alarming rate. This week, the EU is asking its member-states to approve new negotiating positions for the final language. If you live in Europe, let your ministers know that you’re concerned that Articles 13 and 11 will lead to online censorship. So far, we’ve set up action pages for Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, Belgium, and the Czech Republic—and we'll keep adding more over the coming days.

Every now and then we have to remind someone that it's not illegal for people to report facts that they dislike. Electric scooter rental company Bird Rides, Inc. sent a "Notice of Claimed Infringement" over an article on Boing Boing about lawfully modifying scooters. Bird cites the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and implies that even writing about the issue could be illegal. It’s not.
.(Don't) Return to Sender: How to Protect Yourself From Email Tracking

Uniloc is one of the most active patent trolls in the world, having filed more than 170 lawsuits last year alone. But its most recent court records are so heavily redacted, it’s impossible for members of the public to know what’s going on. This month, EFF filed a motion to intervene in Uniloc v. Apple, seeking to unseal a series of documents related to whether Uniloc should be allowed to bring the case at all.
.You Should Have the Right to Sue Companies That Violate Your Privacy

There’s a lot to like about the new California Consumer Privacy Act, but we need to work to amend its critical flaw—a lack of a private right of action. Consumer enforcement is part of EFF’s “bottom-up” approach to public policy.
.Give Up the Ghost: A Backdoor by Another Name

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s counterpart to the National Security Agency (NSA), has proposed a method of eavesdropping in which a company would be required to convert a 1-on-1 conversation into a group chat—with the government as the third member of the chat. The so-called “ghost” proposal is just another word for an encryption backdoor.

Cellular communication infrastructure is woefully insecure, and we are doing nothing to fix it. EFF Senior Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin explains some of the resultant dangers in an op-ed. (New York Times)

Alaa Abd El Fattah has been imprisoned for five years—for organizing a protest. When he’s released in March, he will face an additional five-year “parole” that will require him to spend each night in a police station. Organizations are re-focusing attention on Alaa and his case as his release date approaches. (100 Days for Alaa)
.January 1, 2019 is (finally) Public Domain Day

Works from 1923 are open to all! Newly joining the public domain are films such as The Ten Commandments, and comedies featuring Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. It’s the first time the public domain has grown in 20 years. (Center for the Study of the Public Domain)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has completed testing on a tattoo-matching system that could be used to finger criminal suspects, and found that its algorithm is only 67.9 percent accurate—and that’s before factoring in the possibility of “false positives.” (Washington Examiner)

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.

The collection and use of biometric data gets more widespread and invasive each year. That’s why it’s more important than ever to advocate for—and defend—robust privacy laws in this space.

The Illinois Biometric Privacy Act, or BIPA, is the strongest biometric privacy law in the United States. Last week, in Rosenbach v. Six Flags, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected an amusement park’s argument that violation of a privacy statute is a mere “technical violation.” The plaintiff in that case, a 14-year-old who says his thumbprint was collected without his informed consent, will be allowed to move forward with a lawsuit.

EFF, along with ACLU, CDT, and other allied groups, filed an amicus brief asking for a strong interpretation of BIPA. We’ve been resisting big business efforts to gut BIPA for years now, and we’re glad the Illinois Supreme Court agreed with us in this case.

It could have major ramifications for a separate case against Facebook, involving biometric face surveillance, that's currently on appeal in California. Like the defendant in the Illinois case, Facebook is arguing that losing one’s privacy rights isn’t enough to support a lawsuit, and that a plaintiff must show additional harm in order to sue. Hopefully, the strong result in Rosenbach shuts down that flawed argument once and for all.

If you were in Washington D.C. earlier this month, you might have passed by folks on the street passing out a parody newspaper spoofing The Washington Post. The comedic newspaper, created by the group the Yes Men, has a joke lead story about Donald Trump fleeing the White House in an “Unpresidented” move.

The parody paper, which was dated May 1, 2019, also featured unlikely articles such as a media apology for Donald Trump’s rise to power, and a fictional timeline of Trump’s rise and fall.

But The Washington Post’s lawyers didn’t get the joke. They called the parody an act of trademark infringement, and raised copyright threats. EFF wrote back on behalf of the Yes Men, explaining that political speech has strong protections from trademark claims, which aren’t supposed to be used to policing other peoples’ language. The parody paper is still online, where it belongs.

If there’s one political dynamic that’s become perfectly clear in 2019, it’s this: President Trump is calling for a physical wall to be built along the U.S. southern border. Trump's political opponents, and many other groups, oppose that wall.

In response, some congressional Democrats have suggested building up a kind of virtual wall, built on surveillance technology. They’d like to expand social media screening, deploy drones, scan license plates (and not just from cars crossing the border), and even collect DNA from immigrants. All of these methods raise serious privacy concerns.

At EFF, we’re staying focused on making sure any new border measure protects the essential liberties of both U.S. residents and foreign visitors. The border shouldn't be treated like a Constitution-free zone.

Some European negotiators are still hoping to pass Article 13 and 11, which would impose online copyright filters, as well as licensing requirements for quoting snippets of news. More than four million Europeans have publicly opposed the directive, along with copyright and technical experts and journalists. Even big movie studios and sports leagues have backed away.

We're not out of the woods yet. Our sources tell us that it's just barely possible that if an agreement is reached before February 14, legislation could be vetted, translated, and presented for a vote before EU elections this spring. Keep up the pressure!

Sometimes trademark owners seem to think that they own ordinary words. In this case, U.K. clothing giant Asos sent a cease and desist letter [PDF] to an EFF client for registering a domain with the word “collusion” in it. Our client’s domain, collusion.so, has nothing to do with clothes—it’s about contemporary U.S. political debates. It’s about as far from trademark infringement as possible.

The case has its origins in typographical errors made on Twitter by Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and current attorney to President Donald Trump. Giuliani's typos inadvertently created new URLs, and Twitter users creatively re-directed those newly famous web links to locations of their choosing.

EFF sent a response letter, explaining that there’s no real trademark claim here. Asos quickly apologized, saying that the letter, signed by its outside law firm, should “never have been sent” and assuring us it would take no further action against our client. We’re glad for the apology and hope the whole episode serves as a notice to others who might make overbroad trademark threats.

Federal investigators in Seattle will begin tracking and docketing their warrantless surveillance requests, under an agreement reached after EFF client The Stranger brought a petition to unseal those records. They’ll also issue reports every six months detailing the surveillance requests.

The reports will include case numbers and the main crime being investigated each time the government uses warrantless surveillance. Until now, there’s been no public docket at all on these cases. Now, the public will learn basic details about the requests, and can also request to unseal specific cases.

A misleading Wall Street Journal op-ed by Mark Zuckerberg hits some familiar points in justifying Facebook’s business model. Users don’t need to submit to massive data harvesting to see “relevant ads,” for one thing. And while Zuckerberg calls for government regulation that codifies “transparency, choice, and control,” Facebook is fighting to weaken the most important state privacy laws, like Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, and California’s Consumer Privacy Act.

Cameras that can read license plates are scattered throughout the U.S., used mostly by police departments. What’s worse, some of those cameras are connected to the Internet, easily identifiable, and leaking sensitive data about vehicles and their drivers. (TechCrunch)

Even the CEO of a global tech icon agrees: “We all deserve control over our digital lives. That’s why we must rein in the data brokers.” (Time)

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.

In most issues of EFFector, we give an overview of all the work we’re doing at EFF. Today, in light of recent developments at the U.S. Patent Office, we’re doing a deep dive into a single issue: recent changes to the patent system, and how it’s in danger of heading backwards.

The patent system is broken. The U.S. Patent Office has been issuing vague, overbroad patents for years, especially relating to software. And now the Patent Office is threatening to open the door to even more low-quality software patents. Please join us in telling them to abandon this misguided plan.

Take Action

There are hundreds of “patent troll” companies that exploit our patent system. Today, patent trolls file the majority of high-tech patent lawsuits, covering commonly-used technology from podcasts to newspapers to virtual reality. These companies and individuals produce no products or services—instead, they simply collect patents, and demand money from those working to innovate.

After years of complaints about frivolous patent claims, both Congress and the courts made small steps in the right direction. In a case called Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court barred patents that claim abstract ideas simply by adding computer language. Congress passed the America Invents Act, which allows the public to challenge patents at the Patent Office in a process called “inter partes review.”

Reforms Under Fire

Now, both Alice and the IPR process are under attack. The new Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Andre Iancu, denies that patent trolls are a problem at all—he called them “monster stories.” The Patent Office has issued new guidance to patent examiners, encouraging them to make an end-run to get around the rules of Alice. This could take us back to the bad old days, opening the floodgates to even more of the overbroad software patents that already plague the system.

At the same time, lobbyists are working to weaken Section 101 of the U.S. patent laws. That’s the section that we rely on to kick many of the worst patents out of the system—without going through jury trials that can cost millions of dollars. Lobbyists for patent trolling companies are on the same side as big corporate patent-holders.

If you care about a patent system that doesn’t trample on and extort small developers and business owners, now is the time to speak up. First, check out our Take Action page, and tell the U.S. Patent Office to stop trying to get around the Alice rules. Also, if you’ve personally been affected by bad patents or patent trolls, and are willing to speak out about it, get in touch with us at EFF. We’ll need your help as this debate moves forward—Congress has to hear from those who want a balanced patent system, not one that works just for licensing companies and giant patent-holders.
.EFF UpdatesCall to Action: Tell the Patent Office Not to Reopen the Software Patent Floodgates

Until the Alice v. CLS Bank decision, the U.S. Patent Office had been issuing tens of thousands of abstract software patents. All too often, these patents described everyday culture or business relationships, and then added “do-it-on-a-computer” language describing generic computer hardware and software.

The Alice decision made it clear that abstract ideas can’t be patented just by adding computer language. Unfortunately, new guidance issued by the U.S. Patent Office could undermine the Alice ruling. The guidance downplays rulings that find software-related patent claims ineligible, exaggerates the importance of a few rulings that have allowed software claims, and asks examiners to review applications in a way that is inconsistent with Alice.

Rather than fairly representing all sides, the Patent Office is putting its thumb on the scale in favor of patent applicants, at the public’s expense.

We’re asking EFF supporters to weigh in and tell the Patent Office that creating new rules to bypass a Supreme Court ruling is unacceptable. You can submit a comment on our action page from now through the close of the comment period on March 6.
.AnnouncementsRefiguring the Future Exhibition

Eyebeam, a local organization in the Electronic Frontier Alliance (not EFF) will host a new exhibition (Feb. 8-March 31) offering a politically engaged and inclusive vision of the intersection of art, science, and technology. The exhibition, in partnership with the REFRESH collective, is hosted by Hunter College Art Galleries.
.MiniLinksTelecom Companies Are Seriously Overhyping 5G Networks

Facebook, Google, and other tech companies are lobbying to water down a California law passed last year to regulate data collection. (Washington Post)

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.

EFF has launched a new way to tell companies that we’re serious about the security and privacy fixes that are well-known, and eminently do-able. We’re calling it “Fix It Already,” and are asking nine different companies to bring their products in line with what consumers expect and deserve.

A few examples: Android should let users deny and revoke apps’ Internet permissions. Venmo should let users hide their friends lists. WhatsApp should stop pre-installing spyware on users’ phones. Facebook should leave your phone number where you put it.

We’ve also got suggestions for Apple, Slack, Twitter, Verizon, and Windows 10. Check out Fix It Already, and tell us—and these companies—what these issues mean to you.

When the FCC announced that it would repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order, a historic number of Americans spoke up, sending more than 1.6 million comments to the FCC. The fight for net neutrality has continued, in states, in the courts, and in Congress.

Earlier this month, the Save the Internet Act was introduced in both the House and the Senate. The bill would restore the protections of the 2015 Open Internet Order that we fought so hard for. Competing bills that focus solely on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization miss the point—net neutrality is about basic fairness, not just banning three specific bad acts.

Now’s the time to tell your representatives to stand up for real net neutrality.

Article 13 is the European proposal that would make nearly every online service, community, and platform legally liable for material posted by users that infringes copyright—even if it’s up for just a few seconds.

If it passes, Article 13 will impose copyright filters that won’t stop dedicated infringers—but will have massive collateral damage. Far from protecting artists, “filters for everything” will be a bonanza for fraudsters and crooks who prey on artists.

If Article 13 passes, it’s bound to enrich large media companies, but not the artists whose works they sell. The full European Parliament will likely vote this month or next—this is our last chance to overturn this proposal.

Artists Against Article 13: When Big Tech and Big Content Make a Meal of Creators, It Doesn't Matter Who Gets the Bigger Piece

Article 13 is the European proposal that would make nearly every online service, community, and platform legally liable for material posted by users that infringes copyright—even if it’s up for just a few seconds.

If it passes, Article 13 will impose copyright filters that won’t stop dedicated infringers—but will have massive collateral damage. Far from protecting artists, “filters for everything” will be a bonanza for fraudsters and crooks who prey on artists.

If Article 13 passes, it’s bound to enrich large media companies, but not the artists whose works they sell. The full European Parliament will likely vote this month or next—this is our last chance to overturn this proposal.

We asked EFF supporters last month to help save Alice v. CLS Bank, the 2014 Supreme Court decision that has helped stem the tide of stupid software patents and abusive patent litigation. The Patent Office received hundreds of comments from EFF supporters telling it to do the right thing and apply the law, not narrow it. Thank you!

The Patent Office is applying new guidance that aims to undermine Alice. Last week, EFF filed its own comments opposing the new guidance. If examiners can’t apply Alice, more invalid patents will issue. The Patent Office shouldn’t be allowed to ignore case law it dislikes. With your help, we’ll keep fighting for a system that limits patent grants to actual inventions.

EFF has published The Foilies since 2015, a set of tongue-in-cheek “awards” in which we call out attempts to block transparency and retaliate against those seeking information. We also include simply ridiculous examples of government incompetence.

This year, on Sunshine Week, we have 17 award winners—courts, government agencies, police forces, and tech companies that have done what they can to obscure and hide information that should be public.

It’s time to demand that the companies making money off our personal information keep it private. Last year’s California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, was a big step in the right direction. But there’s still a lot to be done. The best way forward is “Privacy for All,” a bill introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. The Privacy for All proposal builds on the foundation of CCPA to give everyone the rights, knowledge, and power to reclaim their own privacy.

EFF stands with 30 other privacy and civil rights organizations behind Privacy for All, and its commitment to protecting our fundamental right to privacy. We'll be keeping you updated as this bill moves through the legislative process.

Portland Techno Activism 3rd Mondays, or TA3M, will host a presentation and discussion about facial recognition. This event, a combined meeting with Seattle TA3M, will start at 7:00pm at Portland's Northwest Academy.

The event is not hosted by EFF, but by Portland TA3M, a member of the Electronic Frontier Alliance.

US Customs and Border Protection is creating a "biometric entry-exit system" that threatens privacy on a mass scale. Much facial recognition data isn't reliable at all, and agencies haven't said how they'll protect this highly sensitive information. (BuzzFeed News)

Local governments in places like Merced and Union City, California, are giving their residents' personal information to U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), even when it violates privacy laws or sanctuary policies. (ACLU.org)

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.

In one of the most contentious decisions in the European Union’s history, the European Parliament voted to approve the "link tax" and "censorship machine" proposals—Article 11 and Article 13. These proposals undermine Internet users' ability to share their work and create new limits on their ability to link, quote, and critique the news. Online rights supporters around the world are now tasked with challenging this decision and keeping public pressure on lawmakers.

Don't let these disastrous copyright policies put a stranglehold on the Internet. Help us continue to fight back.Donate today!

With this week's vote, European Parliamentarians turned their backs on hundreds of thousands of protesters and five million online petitioners by approving the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. Lobbyists from the media establishment will try to codify this vote and carry it over to jurisdictions throughout the world, but we can’t let them. The future of free expression and the open Internet is at stake.

We have the right to be free of censorship. We shouldn’t be forced to communicate through perpetually-flawed digital filters and arbitrary licensing requirements. With the help of members from 92 countries around the world, EFF has fought these measures at every turn for nearly 30 years. Join us, and help oppose these short-sighted copyright laws that stifle free expression.

This week, the European Parliament will hold a final vote on the Copyright Directive, which contains two divisive clauses—Articles 11 and 13—that will mandate the imposition of link taxes and copyright filters. These censorious, anti-news clauses have sparked a global outcry, including a petition with more than 5 million signatures, street protests in several countries, and a blackout of several Wikipedia websites, as well as German OpenStreetMap and many more sites. If you live in Europe, call your MEP now! It’s the last chance to fight this terrible proposal.
.Congress Has a Chance to Finally End the NSA’s Mass Telephone Records Program

News reports indicate that the NSA has stopped operating its massive surveillance program that collects Americans’ telephone records. Last week, we told Congress that it’s time to end the telephone records program for good. But lawmakers should do more than that—it’s time to investigate all the uses of Section 215, the law used to conduct telephone surveillance.
.EFF UpdatesTo Search Through Millions of License Plates, Police Should Get a Warrant

Automated license plate readers can photograph up to 1,800 license plates every minute. One major commercial database advertises that it contains 6.5 billion plates. Such massive stores of data on where people drive inevitably contains sensitive data about where people travel. Last week, EFF filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that when police search these databases, they should get a warrant—just as would be required for GPS or cell site location information.
.Why the Debate Over Privacy Can't Rely on Tech Giants

How to protect consumer privacy online has become a hot debate this year, both in the states and in Congress. There are finally signs that Congress has stopped listening to just the big tech companies. At a Senate Judiciary hearing this week, representatives from Mapbox and DuckDuckGo explained how they are able to run successful businesses while still respecting user privacy. More than one senator indicated that strong state laws, like California’s Consumer Privacy Act, shouldn’t be watered down—any federal privacy law should be a floor, not a ceiling.
.MiniLinks
.Saudi Arabia: Abusive Charges Against Women Activists

Saudi Arabia has begun 11 trials against activists, most of them prominent women's rights advocates who have been detained without charges for 10 months. Authorities have leveled accusations like “suspicious contact with foreign parties.” Foreign diplomats and journalists have been barred from entering the courtroom to observe the hearings. Among those on trial is Eman Al-Nafjan, a professor of linguistics known for her bilingual blog "Saudi Woman." Al-Nafjan has been on EFF's list of offline bloggers since she was arrested in May 2018 for filming a female driver. (Human Rights Watch)
.Scooter Companies Split on Giving Real-Time Location Data to Los Angeles

Los Angeles Department of Transportation is scheduled to start enforcing data-sharing rules next month, requiring that scooter firms provide real-time location data of their scooters. Location information, especially aggregated over time, is extremely sensitive—and residents may not even be aware that it's being collected. (Motherboard)

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.

In past years, EFF's annual Who Has Your Back report has asked which major tech companies "have your back" when the government comes knocking to request your data or censor your content. For 2019, EFF is changing our focus to cats—and not even when the government comes knocking. (Our research shows that if the government were to come knocking, cats would probably run and hide under the bed, or just not care, because they are cats.)

Instead, this year’s "Who Has Your Cat?" report features substantially redesigned categories and criteria. (Unfortunately, doggos, birbs, and other critters are outside the scope of this report.) We focus on a handful of specific, measurable criteria that reflect attainable best practices, which cats tend to ignore.

First, the good news—all cats assessed in this year’s report received 5 out of 5 stars on feline best practices. We look forward to more long-term improvements across the industry in future years, as cats take steps to be more accountable to themselves and absolutely no one else.

Press and members of the public wishing to discuss the results of our new survey, preferably while surrounded by small bowls of milk and bouncy loops of metal with fuzzy cloth attached, should check EFF's Instagram account. The account often contains damning evidence of cat rule-breaking in our offices.
.EFF UpdatesRight to Be Forgotten Regulators To Launch "Internet of Thingummies"

The EU has announced the investment of six billion euros into a new alternative network that respects the right to be forgotten, including the subsidiary right of not remembering what it was you intended to do when you first started to connect to the network. "We're calling it the Internet of Thingummies, because none of us wrote down the much better name we came up with last week," announced its chief researcher, who was either Tim Berners-Lee or Vint Cerf, nobody seems entirely sure. The IoT mesh network is expected to be deployed using thousands of tiny "smart dust" transceivers smaller than a human eyelash, just as soon as anyone can recall where they last put them.
.MiniLinksEFF Announces End of Fake News; Everything on the Internet Now True

Technologists at the non-profit claim to have fixed the problem by editing the Wikipedia entry for "gullible."

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.

Last week, the House of Representatives voted 232-190 to pass the Save the Internet Act (H.R. 1644). Thank you for speaking up to tell the House to protect net neutrality! The Save the Internet Act will restore the provisions of the 2015 Open Internet Order—including privacy and competition protections—and bans against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

Now we need to let the Senate hear from us. Contact your Senators today and tell them to co-sponsor the Save the Internet Act (S. 682).

We launched Fix It Already last month to tell Silicon Valley companies about the privacy and security fixes they need to make right away. The campaign already has its first victory, with WhatsApp fixing its long-standing group-messaging problem. Now, WhatsApp users will be able to asked for their express consent before they are added to group messaging threads. The company says that the changes will be available to all as the next version of WhatsApp is rolled out over the next several weeks.

EFF is protecting an anonymous Reddit user against an abusive copyright claim brought by a religious group. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is the supervising body and publisher for Jehovah’s Witnesses, has subpoenaed Reddit seeking information about a user who has posted comments and concerns about Watchtower magazine, as part of a potential copyright lawsuit. The user’s comments include copies of an advertisement, and a chart describing compliance with European privacy laws.

The posts are classic lawful fair uses—that is, legal ways to use copyrighted material without permission. EFF has filed a motion to quash Watchtower’s subpoena.

Your Fourth Amendment rights shouldn’t disappear because of an email provider’s terms of service. That’s the point that EFF is arguing in our recent amicus brief in U.S. v. Wilson, a federal appellate case.

Email and other electronic communications contain the most personal details of our lives. Almost all courts that have squarely addressed the issue have found that emails, texts, and other electronic communications are protected from warrantless searches by the Fourth Amendment.

But in the Wilson case, a district court reasoned that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply if an email user violates a provider’s terms of service. The Ninth Circuit should reject such a sweeping invalidation of constitutional rights, and we look forward to the court’s decision.

The New York Times editorial board endorses a national "Right to Repair" bill in this April 6 editorial, pointing out that a competitive landscape of independent repair shops dramatically lowers the price of maintaining everything from a tractor to an iPhone. (New York Times)

Companies are collecting more data on their workers. A 2018 survey by Gartner found that 22% of organizations in various industries are using employee-movement data, and 17% are gathering workplace computer-usage data. As more consumer privacy laws take shape, will employees' concerns be passed over? (CNBC)

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.

A bill that will treat certain copyright claims like traffic tickets is back. If passed, the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act) will be an invitation to abuse copyright law. It will allow a “Claims Officer” in the Copyright Office to award damages of up to $15,000 per work infringed, and agreements that are essentially binding injunctions. Copyright law impacts freedom of expression, and can’t be treated in such a cavalier manner. Tell your representatives to oppose the CASE Act.
.EFF Updates

The NSA has searched through the phone records of millions of Americans since 2001, without ever having obtained a warrant. The Call Detail Records program is a massive violation of Americans’ privacy. What’s more, it’s been ineffective at its goal of aiding counterterrorism investigations, according to oversight bodies. Rather than modifying the program to comply with the law, the NSA has now chosen to stop using it, according to news reports.

The public has a First Amendment right to record the activity of on-duty police officers. This week, we filed an amicus brief in U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that argues that the use of electronic devices to record police activity increases accountability, and enhances the public discussion about police use of force and racial disparities in the justice system. The case, Frasier v. Evans, was brought by Levi Frasier, who recorded Denver police punching a suspect in the face to get drugs out of his mouth. Police retaliated by seizing Frasier’s tablet and apparently deleting the video, which was later retrieved from cloud storage.
.AnnouncementsCLIC presents “About Face: The Changing Landscape of Face Recognition”

On May 10 in Boston, EFF Surveillance Litigation Director Jennifer Lynch will speak at a conference that explores the regulatory, legal, and human implications in facial recognition technology. The event takes place at 9:00am at Northeastern Law School.

Certbot is EFF's tool for getting automated certificates from Let's Encrypt. Certbot makes getting certificates easier, but how much easier? And which groups of users get left behind?

On May 16 at 1:30pm, EFF's Certbot team will discuss the results of our usability studies to find out how people were using tooling around HTTPS. We'll discuss our often surprising results, and lessons we learned to make Certbot more helpful. The event is at NorthSec in Montreal, Canada.
.MiniLinksTech Lobbyists Push to Defang California's Landmark Privacy Law

A county in Western Oregon has become ground zero “for a high-stakes battle over the unregulated growth of policing by algorithm.” (The Washington Post)

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.

We have launched TOSsed Out, a new iteration of EFF’s longstanding work in tracking and documenting the ways that Terms of Service (TOS) and other speech moderating rules are unevenly and unthinkingly applied to people by online services. TOSsed Out will highlight the myriad ways that all kinds of people are negatively affected by these rules and their irregular enforcement. As a result of these practices, posts are deleted and accounts banned, harming those for whom the Internet is an irreplaceable forum to express ideas, connect with others, and find support.

TOSsed Out continues in the vein of Onlinecensorship.org, which EFF launched in 2014 to collect reports from users in an effort to encourage social media companies to operate with greater transparency and accountability as they regulate speech.

Nominations are now open for the 2019 Barlow Awards to be presented at EFF's 28th Annual Pioneer Award Ceremony. Established in 1992, the Pioneer Award Ceremony recognizes leaders who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of technology. In honor of Internet visionary, Grateful Dead lyricist, and EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, recipients are awarded a “Barlow." Nominees must have contributed substantially to the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications. Their contributions may be technical, social, legal, academic, economic or cultural. Nominations will be open until 11:59pm PDT on June 5, 2019.
.EFF UpdatesBroadband Monopolies Are Acting Like Old Phone Monopolies. Good Thing Solutions to That Problem Already Exist

The future of competition in high-speed broadband access looks bleak. A vast majority of homes only have their cable monopoly as their choice for high-speed broadband, and small ISPs and local governments are carrying the heavy load of deploying fiber networks that surpass gigabit cable networks. Research now shows that these new monopolies have striking similarities to the telephone monopolies of old. But we don’t have to repeat the past; we’ve already seen how laws can promote competition and break monopolies.
Victory! EFF Wins National Security Letter Transparency Lawsuit

A federal district court in San Francisco has ruled strongly in favor of our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records of how and when the FBI lifts gag orders issued with National Security Letters (NSLs). These records will provide a window into the FBI’s use of a highly secretive investigative tool that has been historically misused. They will also provide insight into the effectiveness of the USA Freedom Act, the national security reform law passed by Congress in 2015.

The century-old tradition that the Espionage Act not be used against journalistic activities has now been broken. Seventeen new charges were filed this month against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, which make clear that he is being prosecuted for basic journalistic tasks—dropping the charade that this prosecution is only about hacking or helping in hacking. Regardless of what one thinks of Assange’s personal behavior, the indictment itself will inevitably have a chilling effect on critical national security journalism, and the dissemination in the public interest of available information that the government would prefer to hide. There can be no doubt now that the Assange indictment is an attack on the freedoms of speech and the press, and it must not stand.

A federal magistrate in San Francisco has ruled that a Jehovah’s Witness whose online postings were intended to stir debate about the religion’s practices can remain anonymous, except for identification to lawyers for the religion’s Watchtower publication, which says the posting violated its copyright. (San Francisco Chronicle)

While San Francisco has passed a ban on government use of facial recognition, it does not prohibit businesses or private citizens from using facial recognition systems. It is unclear where corporations will stand in the debate moving forward. (Salon)About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, we defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, promote the rights of digital innovators, and work to ensure that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are enhanced, rather than eroded, as our use of technology grows. EFF is a member-supported organization. Find out more at https://eff.org.